Tag Archives: olympia

I regret saying I would teach in the fall. But maybe even if I hadn’t, I would still be feeling this urgency, this sense that I am at every moment letting something irreplaceable slip away with too little notice. This day is the only this day ever. I will never get this back. There will never be another. That is the feeling once the air changes, once the light changes, once it is sharp.

I talked on the telephone to Mum and she said she’d smelled fall in the air the morning before. I said it hadn’t happened yet here. And then the next day it did. Fall. Fall. It is the right word. There is flail or there is surrender, but there is only one way it will go. Fall.

The sign of a good summer: I have lost track of how many times we’ve been sailing. Many hours stolen from the middle of work days. Many hours added to the ends of days that were already so full. Even one night sail.

Mostly the wind has been light, and I have let myself just enjoy this – begin to accept that for me sailing is not what it might be for others: not a test, not a proving. It is a quieting, a stilling, a settling-in and down. I sometimes find myself wanting to listen to something other than the world in and around the boat…to tune into the news on my NPR app. But I do not yield to this temptation. I stay there. Fully there. I wait and watch and listen.

I am always sad and happy to be back at the dock. I love the tending and trimming that goes with stowing June properly. The coiling, cleating and furling. I love the perfecting of care. I love the utility. I love the beauty of this boat. I love the work of her.